Social media give me the privilege of learning about more people than I could meet in my whole life. Taken together, the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot, though.

The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males.

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem.

Victor LaValle Quotes